In industries such as the postal, courier, and supply chain industries, package objects (e.g. letters or parcels) are enrolled into a system for tracking and/or delivery. For example, items presented at post offices and related locations for onward delivery currently require the counter staff and/or customers to manually enter data regarding address information, weight, dimensional information, and other shipment characteristics. The manual collection of this information is costly, in terms of time, error rates on manual data entry, plus errors in correctly rating items. Retail locations are also typically required to maintain space for both the scale and the metering devices.
Some postal authorities mandate the capture of additional information for items being accepted across post office counters. It is now a common requirement that dimensions, destination, and sender information be captured. Complexity is increasing while the ability to maintain a well trained counter staff is declining. Increasing use of franchise points of presence is causing compliance, training, accounting, and security problems.
For example, a customer may bring a package to a post office point of sale. A postal employee will receive the package, gather information related to the package (e.g. intended destination, package dimensions, package weight, type of delivery, desired delivery date, customer information, payment information etc.). In typical situations, the information is gathered manually, and in a highly linear and labor intensive fashion. For example, in a typical transaction, a postal employee might receive a package, weigh it, measure its dimensions with a tape measure, enter this information into a computer, read a label on the package, enter delivery address information found on this label, query the customer about desired delivery type and date, enter this information into a computer, provide pricing information to the customer, accept payment, etc.
Improvement in enrollment efficiency could provide substantial savings in, for example, labor costs, error costs, and time.